reboot Okay, I’ve been working on the same project for ages. In multiple languages, and a couple different frameworks. My plan from the outset was to create something small so that I could learn the tools and languages I would need to create my own games. Not clickity click around in some game builder either. I wanted to have a really firm grasp of what I was building. I wanted to write the code, and work with the tools on a fairly low level. That said, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I’m not a complete idiot. I realize that the constraints of time and familiarity with the tools wouldn’t allow me to create my own game engine, or anything like that. I started by Using first XNA, dabbling with OGRE, and then settling on Unity. All three allowed me to work quickly enough to see progress, but still required that I learn JavaScript or C# and, more importantly, some work flow, structure, and design strategies.

previous posts in this series Intro Randomization Engagement Asymmetry Before writing this I tried really really hard to think of a sport that is asymmetric. Baseball and Cricket are played asymmetrically, with one team in the field and one team at bat, but the game requires each team to take turns at bat or in the field, making the game, overall symmetrical. It is possible that you could consider hunting and fishing to be asymmetric sports, with the hunter versus the prey. Hunting is not really a game, but a primary survival skill of human beings, as predatory animals. As a survival skill, people finding fun and engagement from hunting is fairly easy to understand. People also enjoy eating and using the toilet. These are not things that most would consider games. If there is any game to be made of hunting, then it is a competition between the hunters and not actually between the hunter and the prey. Of course that makes hunting and fishing, again, symmetric.

previous posts in this series Intro Randomization If it wasn’t already painfully clear, I really am not speaking from a place of authority here. I really don’t know if what I’m writing is accurate, or completely ass backward. I’m exploring what I think makes a game a game. These three elements are what I’ve managed to come up with so far. Feel free to tell me if I’m completely out to lunch.

Randomization Most, if not all games, contain some element of randomization. I’m talking games here, all games, not just video games. Ball bounces, dice rolls, card shuffles, are all complex enough equations that, as far as the average human brain is concerned, they are effectively random. Often, as is the case with chess or checkers, the random element is provided by a second human. Maybe this is not so much “random” as it is simply the obscured or inscrutable tactics of another human player. The end result is the same. We simply don’t know what will happen moment to moment, and we need to react to events as they unfold. Successfully predicting, or reacting to a random event makes people feel excitement, elation, a sense of accomplishment. Otherwise known as fun.

just a quick aside. Before I put up my post on randomization in video games, I thought I should make a comment on the latest build of “colour game” (working title).

Space Invaders That’s it. I’m making space invaders. Enemy blips locked in an inevitable march toward one lone protagonist. I think I come by it honestly. An awful lot of video games are space invaders. Think about all the video games you have ever played… now really think… how many of those are the spawn of space invaders. Galaxian and Galaga are direct descendants of space invaders, but so is tempest, albeit oriented in a ring rather than vertically. Xevious, 1942, also space invaders… but now the background scrolls. Robotron 2084 is space invaders with no constraints on axis for the player or the enemies. I think the simple reason is, space invaders only works as a video game. Sure there are video games that predate space invaders, even other shooting gallery video games, and space invaders itself has roots in the electromechanical shooting galleries popular decades before. Space invaders added a level of randomization, engagement, and asymmetry that didn’t exist before then. Most video games before then were either two player affairs, or very repetitious and predictable games like breakout. While having another player definitely adds the randomization and engagement, it almost by definition requires a level of symmetry.

Months ago I wrote a checklist. I did a breakdown of my short and long term to do’s. When I went to look them over today I found that I had done them. all of them.

New Graphics! Yay! ‘cept they are only marginally better than the old graphics, you might say. you would be right. but the groundwork is there for them to improve a bit at a time now. The old version had too many problems with pivot locations and ambiguous rotation angles. What was very broken is now less broken.

So my UI design was lousy. really really lousy. but that is A-OK. See, the real purpose of doing this game… and writing this blog, is just to learn. I set about the task of creating a throw away game… something that I would build to learn the tools, learn some coding, just simply get something built. Now if it turns out the game is any fun, then I would dive right in and finish the thing, but this will not likely be the case. This game will probably always suck. that is A-OK too.

I put up a new build a bit ago, but you probably won’t notice any differences. All th changes are under the hood. I’m rooting through and cleaning up code as I go. Bad shit goes out and slightly improved shit goes in.

so you want to be a cheater, and cheat. I added a little reset button there in the bottom right. That button resets the color gauges and lets you keep messing around with the colors without having to restart when you run out.

I put up a new build. I fixed some of the little quirks and pretty much moved everything over to mouse control. I added a little glow mouseover effect that I am not at all happy with yet… but what the hell, I’m gonna rip all the art out pretty soon anyway.

today I made some more tweaks and edits to the resource management system. now i just have to make it interesting or, god forbid, fun.

I set up the resource gauges today. I’m one step closer to this actually being a game rather than some odd widget. Pretty soon here I will go into some detail about what I’m building. I’ll probably just post up the link to the dev versions and let folks bang on it. The grand experiment would be to just do game development with the kimono wide open . Really give away all the details… I’m not sure if I have worked up the courage for that just yet.